The
Space Station is the largest manned object ever sent into space, encompassing
43,000 cubic feet of living and working space - the equivalent of
two Boeing 747's

#2
-

Assembling
the Space Station will require 45 launches - 36 from the United States
and nine from Russia - and 1,705 hours of space walks, which is double
the number of hours U.S. astronauts have walked in space since the
beginning of the space program.

#3
-

When
fully constructed, the Space Station will be visible to more than
90 percent of the world's population.

#4
-

Humans
need a little less sleep in space because our bodies do very little
work in a microgravity environment. It takes no effort at all to
raise an arm, hold your head up, or move a bulky object.

#5
-

The
Space Station consists of 70 separate major components and hundreds
of minor ones, all of which will be assembled for the first time in
space.

Astronauts
aboard the Space Station will spend more time working on experiments
than anything else. Many projects require teamwork, so astronauts
frequently work in pairs.

#7
-

The
Space Station circles the Earth every 90 minutes, and looks down on
85 percent of the populated areas.

#8
-

The
human body tends to lose muscle and bone mass rapidly in space. To
fight this loss, at least two hours of strenuous exercise is built
into every astronaut's daily schedule on the Space Station.

#9
-

The
construction of the Space Station is a collaboration of 100,000 people,
hundreds of companies, and sixteen nations spread over four continents,
among them the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Brazil,
Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

#10
-

The
Space Station is the most expensive single object ever built. The
United States' participation has been estimated at $96 billion - a
figure that nearly equals the combined cost of all of the Apollo missions
to the moon.